Introducing... Playing God, the first stage play by the TV sitcom team of Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran.

A chance meeting with Scarborough playwright Alan Ayckbourn has led to sitcom stalwarts Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran realising their desire to branch out into stage plays, after 25 years in television. From the BAFTA award-winning duo responsible for Birds Of A Feather, Goodnight Sweetheart, Shine On Harvey Moon, Love Hurts and The New Statesman comes Playing God, a "dull grey comedy" - comedy with a cancerous sting in its tale - at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. Maurice Gran explains all to CHARLES HUTCHINSON.

Why make your move into theatre now?

"Laurence and I have always enjoyed theatre and we've talked for a long while about writing for theatre. We've had a few stabs at it that didn't come to anything, but then Laurence met Alan Ayckbourn at the Hay-on-Wye Festival of Literature - as far back as June 2001 - and he gave us a lot of encouragement.

"We went up to Scarborough to work with him for a couple of days and his opinion from the start was that while he couldn't help us write the characters or jokes, he might - as he said in his very kindly way - be able to help us to get the buggers on and off stage!"

Have you found writing Playing God a very different experience to writing for television?

"We've always been confident in our ability to tell stories, and once we found we could sustain the internal dynamics of ten, 15, 20-minute scenes on stage, we were fine.

"A lot of the plays you see in the West End, or even the East End, are written like screenplays for the stage but we wanted to subject ourselves to the disciplines of the stage. We know from going to the theatre the power of focusing the dynamics of a play on a few people, and we wanted to write something that had a traditional theatre setting, if not traditional content.

Describe the plot of Playing God.

"It's four people in one room - a very nice room in a very ritzy house on the edge of Richmond Park - with their gloves off. Playing God is the story of retired rock'n'roll legend Ed, who's married to the beautiful and vivacious Claudia, a travel writer with a guilty secret. His best friend Clive is unhappily married to high-flying Henri, a tough businesswoman who's even tougher to live with.

"One night during dinner, Ed makes an announcement that puts them all off their pudding. Suddenly everything has changed, but is Ed playing God or just plain devilish?

"It's a dull grey comedy about death and megalomania and how we like to leave our mark, by doing things like leaving our diaries out to be destroyed. To some extent it's a comedy about cancer - and there haven't been too many of those, have there?

Cancer is one of the last taboo subjects, isn't it?

"When the idea came to us to write about cancer, we knew it would have to be a theatre show, firstly because theatre is a bracer medium than television, and secondly because the interplay of the characters we ended up with was theatrical in all senses, larger than life as well as physically.

"You can't offer a one-off piece for telly unless it's reasonably jolly and has Martin Clunes in the lead or it's reasonably bittersweet and has David Jason in the lead. There's more genuine freedom in theatre; you only have to talk to ten other writers to see it's a pretty widespread malaise in television. In theatre you can do pretty audacious things; you think of something to write, write it and sell it, rather than trying to write what you think a TV producer would like if only he could write."

It sounds like you find television increasingly frustrating.

"There are so few slots now. Comedy, whether predictable or unpredictable is comparatively rare these days, and 75 per cent of drama is continuing dramas or soaps, and that really includes Holby City, The Bill, The Royal, all respectably produced, but there's a huge, huge mass of them, the ASDAs of TV. There aren't a lot of us who want to run cheese shops."

Does that mean you and Laurence will be writing more plays?

"Absolutely. In our plans for the next year or two, I can envisage us spending more time writing for the theatre than the screen. Scarborough have said they want us to continue this relationship - though after this play they may want to change their mind! One of the great things with theatre is that it's live. With TV you look back and say 'Wouldn't it have been great if they'd dropped the pencil at that moment'. With theatre you can change things."

Playing God, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, various dates in the summer repertory season between June 30 and September 3. Box office: 01723 370541.

Updated: 09:56 Friday, June 24, 2005